Disobedience and truth

 

 

Reflections of contemporary  philosophy in a post-Foucault era

Together with objectivity, the truth is another of the most solid myths of our educational culture […] And again, how much suffering has the truth had to cause to prevail! And it is that, in the same way that objectivity is nothing more than a dominant subjectivity, truth is nothing more than a fiction staged by power to justify itself.

 

 

 

Everyone claims to have their truth, but is there any that can be valid or universal? Is there anything that can be inevitably true? Is there a truth that cannot be doubted? Is there something that is true regardless of the eyes that look at it? For some people absolute certainty will be in some god, for others in any ideology; any of these options would be an endless debate. What, then, can be true? Could oppression be the only reality of which we can be aware?

 

 

 

The idea of absolute truths is nothing more than a claim to “impose behaviors that we do not share, in the name of some law of nature, the essence of man, untouchable tradition, divine revelation. The social lie has always been based and will always be based on oppression or domination.

 

So those truths that we presuppose are nothing more than ways of controlling our minds and our actions; the truth to which we are subjected and submitted is the truth of power. Power not only exerts a physical coercion in which it tells us what is allowed and what is not; but also exerts a moral coercion. In fact, for the first to occur, the second must exist. This coercion is founded on a series of premises qualified as true: cultural guidelines, prejudices, dogmas, etc. The function of these truths is the division of people (let's look at how society is structured) the more divided we are, the greater the power that these truths exercise over us. The truth of power divides us and encourages exclusion: ageism, saneism, machismo, speciesism, racism, etc. So, if all truth has to be questioned for being the cause of submission, suffering, submission and degradation of the species; the only thing we can be aware of is the existence of oppression.

 

According to dictionaries, "oppressed is one" who is subjected to the vexation, humiliation or tyranny of someone "

 

Social oppression makes citizens feel 'crushed', suffocated, unable to be themselves, and often forced to act in ways that are not normal for them.

 

We are sorry to assume that we know we are incapable of being ourselves, because of alienation and submission; because of living inserted and inserted in a destructive, competitive, and, ultimately, incoherent system. But that social oppression that prevents us from being, also prevents us from being others (human and non-human).

 

 

 

It is surprising that with the enormous and perhaps excessive rumbling of the news about corruption, the worst of corruptions has not been glimpsed [...] I am referring to the corruption of the mind, to the continuous putrefaction of due conscience, among other monstrosities of mental degeneration, to the manipulation of information. These corruptions are not instant blurs of vision. Over time, these manipulations of our helpless neurons end up distorting, disorienting and dislocating them. It will be difficult for them to make a synapse, a pertinent and correct connection.

Once we assume that our perception is distorted, we will be able, perhaps, to recognize that we live oppressed and oppressed. Recognize that we do not decide on our lives. Recognize that we are not free.

 

Oppression, which can affect some groups or others in multiple ways,

 

It can manifest itself through stereotypes disseminated by the media, cultural stereotypes, market mechanisms, etc., that is, forms of habit that are normal in people's daily lives.

So the normal thing is that we live under the yoke of oppression, incited and incited by culture and the media, and under the interests of a market. A market that, along with the two previous ones, turns women into objects and animals into food; a market that expands with our need to want to be like others, to not want to clash, to not be different for fear of exclusion.

 The capacities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immensely greater than ever; which means that the extent of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before.

 What should we do in the face of such a bleak scenario? Oppression goes beyond “he who dominates you so much only has two eyes, only two hands, only has one body, that which dominates us no longer has eyes, no longer has hands, no longer has a body… what dominates us are a set of inherited and imposed ideas that are maintained by the interests of a few. Ideas that are embedded in our mind, and that occupy all spheres of life, that condition our way of thinking and that prevent us from distinguishing between real needs and artificial needs.

 A moral revolution must be the total reorientation of the human personality, which can only be achieved with two methods that could be called integration and education.

 We live in a society characterized by exclusion and by an education that, as M. Nussbaum would say, seeks to make us only economically productive subjects. Once we are aware of oppression, it will be in our power to investigate about what subjects us and makes us submit to others. It will be in our power to question or blindly obey. It will be in our power to fight for freedom.

 Let each one follow entirely, always and everywhere, the impulse of his nature, be it limited or brilliant. Only then will man know what it is to live, instead of despising life without ever having lived it.

 

But how can we recognize our own nature if we don't recognize ourselves? How can we disobey if even disobedience is within certain limits? How can we not try if we are going to die without having lived? Skill is acquired with practice.

 

Obedience has two distinct phases: either we obey because we cannot do otherwise, or we obey because we believe we must. In the first case, we would speak of a domain exercised through physical force, which cannot (in the words of Alexandra David-Néel) be called authority, since only the domain of abstract ideas would refer to it. Secondly, we find obedience from believing that it is necessary to obey that is fed by the fear of the unknown. Cultural patterns incite us to obedience; and education, far from promoting critical thinking, imbues us with a uniform thought that is further and further removed from our interests as individuals and as a society: “the alienated subject is devoured by his alienated existence.

 

If the only truth of which we can be certain is oppression, it would be better to end it and not be certain of anything. Oppression feeds on obedience, and obedience on a lack of criticism. Will it be our goal, in a society like the one we live in, to acquire it? If "the secret of life is to live" will boycott and disobedience be the only way to achieve it?

China, Taiwan, Russia, the United States and the EU: the geopolitics of power

The last  military exercises that China has carried out for six days with the deployment of dozens of Chinese planes and ships in the Taiwan Strait together with the announcement by Beijing of the suspension of cooperation mechanisms with Washington have increased tension in the already difficult relations between both countries. There seems to be no doubt that Beijing has staged a mock invasion of Taiwan regardless of the fact that the Chinese military response is clearly disproportionate. It provides China with undeniable military experience, especially in the joint field where the different branches of the Chinese Armed Forces participate.

 

The area of East Asia where these military exercises take place around Taiwan forms one of the four great current world geopolitical dilemmas. In this particular area, it is about resolving the unstable Sino-Japanese geopolitical balance along with the existing disputes in the South China Sea (MCM), the North Korean nuclear conflict and the very future of ancient Formosa.

 

The other three major geopolitical dilemmas are related to who will achieve world leadership once the United States could lose its role as global hegemon; that is, an actor from the democratic bloc or one from the authoritarian bloc. Another is the Intermarium or rather the Baltic Sea-Black Sea line in the sense of knowing if it will be the EU or Russia who will achieve peace and control of this isthmus; and the third aims to solve the labyrinth of frictions existing in the Middle East where countries and regional and international entities maintain a critical geostrategic competition.

 

To be realistic, from a strategic and operational point of view, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is not yet ready to carry out an invasion of Taiwan that would constitute one of the largest and most complex military amphibious landing operations in history. world at the same time that it would face a possible conflict with the United States.

 

It is true that China regards the 36,000 km2 Taiwan as a breakaway province and is committed to reunification, by force if necessary. But it is also true that the Taiwanese leadership claims that it is much more than a province, arguing that it is a sovereign state. Taiwan has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders and a military of about 300,000 strong. Currently the number of countries that recognize Taiwan as a State are 14, including the Vatican.

 

Current President Tsai Ing-wen, who leads the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that advocates formal independence from China, was re-elected in 2020. Several months earlier, Hong Kong had suffered major unrest, with protesters protesting Beijing's growing influence. . This situation was experienced in Taipei with alarm and great concern. Also in 2020, the entry into force of a national security law in Hong Kong was interpreted as yet another sign that Beijing was increasingly asserting its authority over the territory. Long gone was the Chinese policy of “one country, two systems”.

 

It must be borne in mind that, regardless of Chinese interests with respect to Taiwan, China has developed and is developing the old geopolitical doctrine of Friedrich Ratzel's vital space - used by the Nazi regime -, a pattern of coercive and unilateral behavior with claims territorial rights in the South China Sea not endorsed by international law against other claims by coastal states such as Brunei, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan. Furthermore, Beijing has militarized atolls, reefs and islands for strategic reasons and in support of its illegal territorial claims.

 

The strategic aim of China's land reclamation activities together with the establishment of naval and air bases on artificial islands scattered by the MCM, especially the Paracelsus and Spratley Islands, provide Beijing with critical footholds for exercise its maritime power projection capacity, in its broadest sense, first around the South China Sea and then extend its expansion towards the Pacific Ocean beyond the First Island Chain or towards the Indian Ocean through the Strait from Malacca..

 

For Washington, the alliance with Taiwan has an important strategic asset, taking into account the aforementioned claims by Beijing in the MCM and the advantages that control of this area would have in terms of access to hydrocarbon reserves and trade lines. Chinese control of some of the Spratley and Paracelsus islands could certify Beijing's dominance over the MCM, changing the regional order through the privileges and benefits offered by the respective Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs).

 

On the other hand, the American response to the rise of China constitutes one of its main military objectives in the near future. The speed with which China has built and then militarized a set of artificial islands in the South China Sea in violation of international law is a unilateral decision that increases the risk of conflict in the MCM while threatening regional and international stability.

 

The aggressive Chinese military exercises carried out in front of Taiwan, which betray China's traditional foreign policy of peaceful expansion, are highly significant. This radical change that does not respect what is often called with pride and satisfaction, by the Chinese authorities, as Beijing's modus operandi, indicates the transformation of the use of Chinese soft power, especially through economic measures, by hard power, through performances in the military field, using the terminology of Joseph Nye.

 

The impact of China's aspirations in East Asia regarding international security is manifested, apart from the conflict with Taiwan and the disputes in the MCM, not only in the Sino-American confrontation in geostrategy in the Western Pacific or in the commercial field but also in the position with Japan, China's main regional geopolitical rival, and in its actions with respect to the North Korean nuclear conflict.

 

The way in which China addresses and resolves these potential conflict situations will be a sample and an indication of what type of leadership the country of the Great Wall will adopt as a hegemonic power in East Asia or as a great power, in its case, in the international board. The coercive live-fire military exercises that it has just carried out, violating the existing median line of separation in the Taiwan Strait, using hard power creates many misgivings and concerns in the Western Pacific countries.

 

In the current and foreseeable geopolitics of power, the United States and China will be the main protagonists, accompanied by the European Union and Russia, respectively. As the geopolitical center of gravity of the first half of the 21st century is located in Asia-Pacific, dominance over Taiwan may constitute the first key strategic asset that will modulate the geostrategic chessboard of East Asia that will powerfully influence the new international order that will emerge.

 

The three Taiwan Strait crises

 

Since 1949, the relationship between Taiwan and China has been changing from the initial clear distancing to an increase in treatment between the two nations. However, the complex political and legal situation seems far from being resolved and the unification of both territories in a single China continues to be an old, but current, aspiration of the CCP. The double circumstance of being considered part of China and at the same time being a prosperous country, a liberal democracy and with the support of most Western countries, have made Taiwan the perfect point of friction between the People's Republic of China and the US. In fact, there have been three moments in which the tension between the two countries grew to the point of fearing an armed conflict. They are the well-known three Taiwan Strait crises.

 

First Taiwan Strait Crisis.

 

The first crisis occurred shortly after the end of the Chinese civil war, in 1954. After the end of the Chinese civil war, the flight of the Kuomintang and its refuge in Taiwan did not make the mainland authorities forget their desire to conquer the entire territory. and totally win. This fact, that of an inconclusive war, is the origin of the tension that has been prolonged over time.

 

The trigger for the first crisis was the talks that gave rise to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO[3], in its acronym in English) and in which Taiwan participated. The Beijing authorities would not passively accept the mere possibility of the ROC being recognized in an international forum as an autonomous country of the PRC.

 

In the international framework described, the Chinese attacks took place on the two islands belonging to Taiwan and located about two miles from China, Matsu and Quemoy. Through these actions, China intended to pressure Taiwan to abandon its attempt to establish itself as a de facto independent country while showing its rejection of this situation to the rest of the SEATO countries. In addition, for China, these islands were Taiwan's first line of defense and were considered its vanguard for a possible reconquest of mainland China; their bombardment was a warning of Taiwan's possible intentions.

 

On the other hand, the US had deployed the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait, whose main theoretical objective was to prevent attacks between China and Taiwan, but whose presence was interpreted by China as an offensive maneuver. When President Eisenhower withdrew the American ships upon coming to power in 1953, China saw a window of opportunity open to attack Taiwan without fear of a swift American retaliation. As already indicated, the talks for the creation of SEATO were the excuse for the Chinese attack. The Chinese bombardments on the islands had as a major consequence the death of two American soldiers. The US responded immediately with the deployment of three combat groups in the area. The international tension in the conflict grew, including the threat: the US had, China did not, although this information was unknown, and the USSR had and to what extent it would be willing to support its ideological ally.

 

The crisis was followed with great international concern, but the main actors expressed in their speeches, and through some of their acts, wills that were different from the real ones, as has been known later. In fact, neither China nor the US wanted to reach an armed conflict, much less the USSR. China's claims were to show its possibilities and ratify its position and determination on the idea of a single China and, although in a risky way, it laid the foundations of its relations with the US for a long period of time and the role of China in the sphere international. Finally, as quickly as it had appeared, the crisis ended with Mao Zedong's statements alluding to China's unwillingness to go to war.

 

Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.

 

The second crisis in the Taiwan Strait would come soon after, in 1958. In August of that year, China began an offensive against the Taiwanese islands closest to the mainland. After a start of daily and continuous bombardments, they switched to intermittent artillery attacks, alternating the days of attacks, warning the population of the islands and avoiding important targets so that the crisis did not escalate. Clearly, the bombing was used as a political rather than a military tool.

 

The Chinese maneuver had three objectives. First, the Chinese government verified the American commitment to the defense of Taiwan. Second, it served in some way to draw the attention of the US to the need to hold talks with China and serve as a counterbalance to American power, which had just intervened in Lebanon, demonstrating its world leadership. And, third and last, it reaffirmed the power and importance of the new China in the world. In addition to these three objectives, China achieved a fourth, which was to clarify the position of the USSR. Despite being ideological allies, their alliance began to weaken.

 

Although the crisis continued for longer, China achieved its goals relatively quickly when it resumed diplomatic talks with the US. However, the tension between the three countries continued for a time to the point of a nuclear threat, as had happened in the first crisis. Despite the fact that it was internationally accepted that China had the support of the Soviet arsenal, as it became known later, the USSR recognized that China had no intention of using such weapons in this conflict.

 

The final result was more than a thousand deaths, the resumption of talks between the US and China, which would last a short period of time, and the mistrust between these two countries in the medium term, in addition to a greater separation between China and its ideological ally the USSR.

 

Third Taiwan Strait Crisis.

 

The third crisis occurred in the 1990s, already in a different framework than the two previous crises. Taiwan was already a modernized, democratic country with, increasingly, international recognition and weight. For its part, China had proposed a unification of both countries under the formula similar to Hong Kong's "one country, two systems." In addition, in the newborn Taiwanese democracy, voices began to be heard advocating for its own national identity and separate from the idea of unification (the recovery of mainland China). This greater international role of Taiwan began to bother China and affect its relations with other countries, such as the US, also a protagonist in this crisis.

 

Lee Teng-Hui, Taiwan's president since 1988, had begun a series of diplomatic activities to strengthen Taiwan's role globally. The straw that broke the camel's back for China was Lee's visit to his former US university, which took place in 1995. Although unofficial, this visit was an act of protest by Taiwan and with clear criticism of China. Thus, in response, China severed diplomatic relations (which had been normalized since bilateral talks in 1972) with the US and began military missile-firing exercises off China's southeastern coast.

 

Although talks had already begun to reduce tension with the US, the crisis was delayed when China increased pressure on Taiwan as the elections to the island's Parliament approached, scheduled for December 2, 1995. Despite this fact , the talks achieved a gradual reduction in tension and the recovery of the previous status quo.

 

The three crises described above represented the three moments of greatest tension between China and Taiwan and represented a demonstration of the US role in Taiwan and its commitment to its defense. These levels of tension have not been experienced since then, despite the fact that there have been numerous moments of tension between the two countries.

 

In addition to the three crises described, the relationship between the two countries has evolved since the establishment of the Kuomintang in 1950. If the three crises that occurred in the Taiwan Strait are analyzed, it can be seen that the first two were very close to the end of the war civil China and more violent than the third, in 1995. Furthermore, in none of the three, and according to subsequent revelations, has there been a clear will by China to conquer Taiwan.

 

Over the years, Taiwan's democracy and economic prosperity have been established. China, for its part, has become a great power, for which Taiwan remains an old aspiration. This desire to annex Taiwan has regained importance with the arrival of Xi Jimping to power. To understand this conflict, before analyzing the most current facts, it is necessary to know another series of aspects, such as the internal political situation of Taiwan, its society and the ties that unite both countries.

 

To be continued…

 

Of the strenuous task of being free

Living is a motley and difficult journey. Life raises matter in an improbable leap that opposes everything: the peaceful mineral gravity, scarcity and excess, the wear and tear of time, the universal increase in disorder... Astronomers search for habitable planets, and that task alone it is exquisitely arduous: the stars, the planets, the temperatures, the gases, everything must have come to an odd balance. And not even favorable conditions make life probable: the concurrence of countless chances is still missing, their confluence at a point where the happening against the current becomes a miracle. “The strange thing is to live”, writes Carmen Martín Gaite. Life is an exception, the fruit of a thousand exceptions, and every minute a legion of forces attack so much complexity, demanding a return to simplicity.

And is there anything simpler than dying? Just wait. Dying is the unavoidable arrival point of the leap of life, there where it returns to exact horizontality and the attempt ends. Death is the interruption of the exceptional, and its return to the baseline. If life requires strength and effort, and perhaps a certain derangement, dying imposes itself, it always happens and in peace. Everything helps in its way; nothing tires him, nothing contradicts him, nothing prevents him. That is simplicity.

How is life not going to waste us, if it is an exception and complexity? Over and over again we have to reaffirm it, and for this we have to relentlessly oppose what conspires against it, which is everything, including itself. Life has to be reconstructed and justified at every moment: I still want to go on, I still have strength, I'm still capable... The human project, a particularly complex version of life, falls and rises again and again, until it definitely falls. While it lasts, it's a commitment. The same as the French poet Paul Valéry, in his Marine Cemetery, glimpsed with joyful astonishment before the sea that never ceases to recreate itself, the waves that break in without truce... from where?

Human life: a crazy and laborious endeavor, full of noise and fury, but also of light and poetry. Every day is a task, as Ortega y Gasset reminded us: the task of building ourselves by projecting ourselves towards the nothingness of the future, of making our way through the infinity of possibilities (Heidegger would say), of inventing ourselves (Sartre would say)... Can there be a greater mystery? than freedom, a purer expression of the complexity of the human? All determinism is the dream of a return to simplicity, which contradicts us but at the same time calms us down. Every time we discover something that conditions us, we seem to rest a little. “I am a rebel because the world made me like this”, Jeanette sang so many years ago, moving us with that air of a sad and desolate girl. But after each determinism the possibility of choosing appears again: perhaps the world made you rebellious, but behaving as such, or not, is your decision. Even pushing everything to rebellion, you could choose to oppose it. “I can't even conceive of a life without rebellion, so deep was the mark I received. How could I choose what I do not conceive? How everything unheard of is chosen: by commitment. By creative will.

In that election against the grain is where ethics is forged. When we let ourselves be carried away by determinisms, we assume simplicity: letting what conditions us do. That is the probable, and therefore the easy. It is the world choosing for us, pushing us in its flood. Our conditioning accounts for a good part of what we are, of course, therein lies the basis of all the human sciences, which seek those predictable regularities of our behavior. They explain to us, then, but they do not justify us. To justify ourselves, we need a choice, that is, there must be consciousness and freedom. A predetermined human being cannot justify itself, it simply acts by natural programming. It lacks even the most characteristically human. If you can't help but be cruel, for example, then you are literally inhuman.

But if you can avoid it, if you can choose something else, then you go back to the core of your humanity. In return, you can no longer take refuge in determinisms. Sartre called bad faith that fallacious resource behind which we so often hide our decisions. "Man is what he does with what they made of him," she declared with unprecedented lucidity. Condemned to freedom, without possible compromises, we are left alone with our responsibility. Accepting it is a start. It is to assume that, definitively, we have been expelled from simplicity; that our heritage is complexity.

Someone who gives his life to save another person's is a glorious example of that option for complexity. If we admire his feat it is precisely because it goes against determinisms. Or maybe there is a deeper, more secret, more complex determinism that drives us to that exceptionality that is altruism? Social psychologists have suggested the possibility that we carry altruism in our genes, and explain that it could be a behavior that favored our survival as a species. Seen this way, heroism does not seem so admirable. However, our hero still had a choice, and his decision was probably not easy: to lose everything so that someone else, perhaps a stranger, can gain something... Even considering a mere hidden struggle of genes, there is always the decision that chooses to go in favor of some to the detriment of others (because genes also have their dilemmas). Courage and cowardice are our responses to conditioning; we can understand both, but we find one better than the other. That assessment sums up ethics.

 

Are we to conclude, then, that difficult is always better, as some have said? Not necessarily. Rather, you have to think about it the other way around: the best is always difficult; and probably, most of the time, it is more than the worst. A detailed revenge operation is difficult; forgiving, surely, is more. However, I am afraid that Nietzsche would not agree, and would consider forgiveness a weakness typical of the faint-hearted: after all, by forgiving we expose ourselves less to reprisals from our enemies, we opt for the security of compromise. You can forgive for weakness, but if we are weak, forgiving may be the smartest thing to do. Back to simplicity? May be. But choice, after all. Something to be gained and something to be lost. That is what is hard, José Antonio Marina would say, and it is no less so because we have chosen what is best for us.

 

Death is simple; life is hard. Within life, thinking and choosing for oneself, taking responsibility for doing so, is even more difficult. What to think of the abused woman who forgives and ends up murdered by her aggressor spouse? Maybe the hard part for her would have been to break that unhealthy relationship and leave. In this case, forgiveness -perhaps the result of fear- became more bearable, and choosing it was her downfall. She surely needed help, surely undoing her fateful bond was too big for her. She was the victim and that is why it seems to us that her murderer was the real culprit. However, putting yourself in the victim's place is also a choice. Understandable, of course justifiable, but a choice nonetheless. You can, you must help those who act out of weakness, but ultimately there will always be a margin that we cannot, must not reach: that of freedom. The margin of complexity that belongs exclusively to each human being.

We cannot escape complexity, any more than we can escape entropy, which is the relentless return to simplicity. As we cannot stop being while we are, nor prevent what we are from ceasing to be one day. Ours is to pass, ours is to choose: joy of complexity.

 

On the threshold of loneliness

The most deafening sound is the one that is born from silence, from that silence that only allows your heartbeat to inhabit your ears. Like that man who wanders in the gloomy corridors of a house inhabited by nothingness and emptiness, without light, without echoes, only the glow of some ghostly flash created by a spark that has managed to slip through.

 

A man who, upon arriving at his bed, finds in the darkness someone sitting in the old chair behind him, with only his rancid right hand visible, marked by the years and inviting him to come closer, remaining motionless, but in turn, with that involuntary impulse that escapes reason, thus beginning his brief but throbbing walk towards the unknown, feeling how the cold shelters him at every step, until, when he finds himself in front of that being scratched by time, able to from freezing his gaze, he plunges into the depths of his eyes, finding the abyss that lay in him, a man who only reflects what he has hidden from himself, what he has omitted when wanting to escape from loneliness.

 

Thinking and being in solitude

 

The human mind has become one of the loneliest and gloomiest labyrinths in which an individual can travel, being a space overwhelmed by a noisy silence, a storm of thoughts, and where its protagonist is often found in the mist of the opinions of third parties, leaving only that instinct to wave their hands in search of that company that guides them to the longed-for exit, but that, by chance of the unexplored, has not yet knocked on the doorknob of our taciturn Being, then, staying in a maze is not a matter of strength or resistance, but of will.

 

Being for the minority of those who do not walk the paths and days in an inert way, it is an act of great daring to desire detachment from what one is, and go for what one can do, since it is easier to shake the “wings” in the sense of the famished multitude of dreams, that run towards the mountain of discovery.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche already said it in his book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" that "I have found more danger among men than among animals, dangerous are the paths that Zarathustra travels. May my animals guide me!", making it clear that the worst adviser -many times- for man has been man himself, that is, the noise of those who shout sterile verbal conjugations, with the sole purpose of feeling judges among the condemned, leads to a sinister task, which is to assassinate ideas, without any shame, as inquisitors of thought, dressed in puritanical intentions and crimson mallets, being in truth, a tumult of incapable people who cannot think for themselves.

 

But why this? An uncomfortable question for routine ears, because the human being within his tiring life, full of conditions, beliefs and dogmas, is caged, with an indivisible possibility of escape for those who still fear retirement, being reduced only to power. of the will, a will that goes undoing the invisible threads of a social moral adjusted to the benefits of the jailer, and go, irremediably to the arms of the misunderstood solitude; for Nietzsche himself tells us that "a man's worth is measured by the amount of loneliness that he can bear."

 

For this reason, introspective exploration or self-discovery almost inevitably requires a period of solitude on the part of the individual in which his values, convictions and education can be adequately digested, evaluated and transformed; In other words, the preliminary thesis is that being apart gives the individual enough space and time to reflect through mental clarity and emotional sobriety, which he lacked in the social core. Thus, the consideration that solitude is not an arid, stormy and tempting paradise is clearly presented, but rather as a state of happiness and tranquility in harmony with nature; And in case hopelessness invades our mind, keep in mind that premise of Miguel de Unamuno, which reads "never despair even when you are in the dark afflictions, because clean and fertile water falls from the black clouds."

 

Now, if it is true that modern psychology shows that it is extremely important to have a pleasant social circle to achieve well-being, it is also convenient for you to ask yourself in what aspects solitude is favorable for me, Albert Camus said in one of his frequent epiphanies of loneliness that "in the depths of winter I felt that there was an invincible summer in me", then, that would be the secret for a novelist, philosopher and playwright apparently destined to seek solace from his internal emptiness, and who, through writing, managed to describe the optimism of what was believed to be non-existent.

 

Loneliness is the recipe for a brilliant madness that unleashes imagination, innovation, productivity, intimacy and spirituality, because his clairvoyance can be somewhat incomprehensible at first, but the value of being alone with our own conscience is imponderable, we normally perceive the typical figure of the misunderstood genius as an outstanding individual in intellectual terms who is deficient in emotional matters, so much so that there are many times when this stereotype is fulfilled in important figures of the humanities and universal sciences, being able to cite Arthur Schopenhauer, Issac Newton, Charles Darwin and Charles Dickens, who reaped sweet fruits from solitude, despite considering moments of suffering at some stages. At the same time, there are certain geniuses who, even if they find themselves physically isolated, do not qualify their solitude as something harmful, but rather as the best opportunity to develop as individuals, since they understand that they are not isolated, rather they communicate in a different way, they read They listen, debate, meditate, reflect, create and dream. There is a repertoire of thinkers who have woven a network of knowledge so expensive that it becomes incomprehensible to others, to those who are oblivious to the art of introspection, and it is not the simple fact that solitude has the power to make you resilient, ingenious, proactive, effective, conscious, wise, strong, it is that when one knows how to appreciate the greatness that solitude conceals, one is conditioned to be pleased with it, to the point that the company is much less in demand. Friedrich Nietzsche was forceful in saying "my loneliness is not determined by the presence or absence of people, quite the contrary, I hate those who engulf my loneliness if they do so they must at least make sure that their company is worth it".

 

After this, we can realize that being alone is not the same as feeling lonely, one can feel lonely even when surrounded by people, the statement "my loneliness is not determined by the presence or absence of people" describes it perfectly , one does not have to feel loneliness being alone or feel company when being accompanied, loneliness manifests itself when the quality of our social relationships is not comforting enough, in this way rejecting accompaniment will lead us to a totally different type of connection, It would be a calm, mystical, and pleasant link that is based on meditation, abstraction, metaphysical cataclysm, considering that this feeling that you are nothing and that no one cares about you disappears, because by setting a purpose you begin to design a plan to materialize it, you take repeated action, you enjoy the journey, you value the world, your feelings of participation, usefulness and belonging remain complete. fully restored, the introspective transcendence takes shape, since the desire to be with others has been eclipsed by another desire of greater strength, you manage to advance with firm steps towards your human potential, or as Arthur Schopenhauer would say "Loneliness is the luck of all excellent spirits.”

 

Certainly, confinement puts a soft but deadly blindfold on us, since it disguises the good as bad, the abstract as concrete, the convenient as lurid; making uncertainty more common than desired, but which, in turn, gives us an ideal circumstance to discover ourselves and grow internally, since what we are currently experiencing -despite how rough it seems to be- is a golden opportunity It is not for nothing that Schopenhauer reminds us when he says that “tomorrow, like today, will be another day that also comes only once. We forget that every day is an irreplaceable part of life", therefore you do not have to wait for anyone or anything to realize that the opportunity is not in others but is in you, knowing this, seek more and more balance Aristotelian, take care of building quality relationships, these are essential to maximize the aptitude the period in solitude; meanwhile make good use of the only jewel worth being greedy with, time, enjoy yourself, and remember that "solitude is sometimes the best company, and a short retreat brings a sweet return." (John Milton).

 

The geopolitics of Poland in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

 Since the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine on February 24, Poland has played an important role in the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II: it has received more refugees than anyone else, functioning as a buffer zone between the fighting and the rest of Europe, and militarily assisted Kyiv, as part of NATO's support strategy.

 

The cause seems to lie in its geographical position: Poland shares a 498-kilometer border with Ukraine, 375 kilometers with Belarus—Moscow's most staunch ally—and 209 kilometers with Russia, around the Kaliningrad enclave. Even so, he would like it, he does not have the possibility to stay on the sidelines.

But there are also clues in its recent history: after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Poland left behind the communist system and its position in Moscow's sphere of influence to integrate as quickly as possible with Western Europe, joining NATO. and in the European Union.

 

Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, has also tried in recent years to move closer to Western Europe and progressively leave Russia's sphere of influence, and this movement has been one of the main causes of the war.

 

The war reaches Polish territory

The fall of a missile in Polish territory, which caused the death of two people, has just further expanded the country's role in the war, although it does not participate in the fighting or seek an open conflict with Russia.

 

The origin of the missile and the circumstances of the event are not entirely clear, but the president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, said Wednesday that there is "no indication" that it was an "intentional attack." The main hypothesis, according to Duda, is that it is an S-300 air defense missile.

 

And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also indicated that it was "most likely" an S-300 fired by Ukraine on Tuesday, mistakenly landing on Polish territory.

 

In recent days, Russia has fired close to 100 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, and Ukrainian air defenses, including S-300 systems, have attempted to counter this offensive.

 

Poland, Ukrainian refugee center

Since the first day of the war, the daily reality of Poland has been shaken by the massive arrival of Ukrainian refugees, through its 498 kilometers of border.

 

According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Acnur), a total of 12,485,047 Ukrainians crossed the different borders of the country after the start of the war (many returned to their homes in the following months).

 

Most of these Ukrainians, 7,583,850 in total, crossed into Poland, followed by 1,746,421 who went to Hungary and 1,525,677 who arrived in Romania, among other initial destinations. Also, 2,869,100 Ukrainians crossed the border into Russia, as Russian troops occupied different cities and amid reports of forced transfers.

 

Regardless of where they crossed the border, the Ukrainian refugees were then distributed throughout Europe. Of the total 7,841,359 currently registered by UNHCR (i.e. the total number of people who crossed minus the number who later returned to Ukraine), 1,497,849 are settled in Poland under temporary protection as refugees, more than anywhere else. country (next on the list is Germany, which received 1,019,789 Ukrainian refugees).

 

The geopolitical position of Poland

Poland lies in Eastern Europe, between Germany and Russia, and right on the Great European Plain that has allowed for fluid migrations between east and west, a situation that has subjected it to centuries of foreign domination.

 

The country was part of different empires - among them the Russian one - until 1918, then divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II, until it became the People's Republic of Poland, a communist state under the shadow of Moscow. , during the Cold War.

 

When the USSR began to disintegrate, Poland regained its independence

André Glucksmann, successor to Voltaire

Who is Andre Glucksmann?

André Glucksmann (June 19, 1937, Boulogne-Billancourt–November 9, 2015, Paris) began to stand out in the 1970s as a member of (or rather presiding over) the ranks of the group of so-called nouveaux philosophes, young thinkers disenchanted with the Marxism that reflected deeply and starkly on politics, ideological commitment and its social consequences, not hesitating to denounce and criticize both right-wing and left-wing totalitarianism.

From that time there are two interesting books that arise from Glucksmann's pen: The Cook and the Man-Eater (1976) and The Master Thinkers (1978). In these works, the author delves into the roots of the crimes committed in the name of ideologies and the ideas in whose shadow barbarities such as the Soviet gulag are forged. The metaphysics of domination and ideological violence go back to master thinkers such as Hegel, Fichte, Marx or Nietzsche.

 

Later came other decisive works. In 1982, his Cynicism and Passion, an examination of the exercise of philosophy in times of crisis, was published in our language. In 1983, La fuerza del vertigo, a lucid look at the tragedy of a relative world peace based on the deterrence of nuclear weapons.

 

In 1993, The Eleventh Commandment, an analysis of moral behavior before the announced end of history, where classical humanism gives way to a modern humanist ethic that is not afraid to denounce evil from the dark revelation: «That nothing that is inhuman be strange to you." In 2002, Dostoevsky in Manhattan, an invitation to rethink nihilistic violence and the collapse of values in the light of great literary works.

 

This last mentioned work was André Glucksmann's response to the destruction of the American Twin Towers. It already announces in these pages the brutal power of universal nihilistic terrorism. He writes:

 

 

"The almost invisible violence of the 'forgotten' wars and the one that hits the heart of New York spectacularly are the manifestation of a single and identical hubris without borders. At the base, he eradicates with the submachine gun the fragile possibility of guaranteeing a minimum of rights to each individual on the globe; at the top, he programs the brutal annihilation of the democratic city; At both ends of the chain, he launches his deadly challenge to the 21st century, substituting, as soon as he can, the risks and fortunes of a free existence for the law of the thug ».

 

André Glucksmann belonged to the nouveaux philosophes, young thinkers disenchanted with Marxism who reflected deeply and starkly on politics, ideological commitment and its social consequences.

 

Voltaire's influence

Voltaire has been a constantly present figure in the thought of André Glucksmann. He dedicates his last book to him: Voltaire Strikes Back . He presents it as the most current and revolutionary example of the European Enlightenment spirit against the threats, more present than ever, of destructive fanaticism, recurrent totalitarianism and the temptation of a defenseless and accommodating languor in the face of them.

 

Voltaire Strikes Back, by André Glucksmann

According to Glucksmann, the lesson of Voltair's thought is the active defense of tolerance in the face of devastating barbarism. Thus, he does not hesitate to state: "Europe will be Voltairean or it will not be." The West is faced with dangers that it cannot even identify: identitarian and xenophobic nationalisms, theocratic fanaticisms that seek a return to the Middle Ages, nihilistic and fatalistic nightmares. Faced with these infamies, some injections of Voltairean illustration can serve to recover our senses, our author tells us.

 

Candide or optimism, by Voltaire, is for Glucksmann the manifesto of our time. He invites us to read this work that describes the world as it is and not as it is said to be. In its pages are the lessons that the West must remember. Cándido is a bomb for the fanatics and the intolerant, for the infamous of our time: «Since the deflagration, to Cándido, the devotees, whatever their church, cross or crescent, sickle and hammer, the embroiderers of the ideal did not they doubt: they detest it».

 

Glucksmann also says of this Voltairian work:

 

«Delighting in Voltaire does not mean dividing humanity in two —the good on one side, the bad on the other— nor does it mean reducing all issues to a single question that prevails over the others —profane enlightenment against sacred illumination, capitalism against socialism…—, but it does mean dealing with aporias and questions as they arise, with 'good judgment', without the help of extraordinary revelations, always keeping 'the simplest mind'. Following Montaigne, he learns 'more by the contrary than by example'. A man of reason —therefore of doubt, therefore of criticism—, far from the souls entangled in the dark threads of a first creation and a final judgment, Cándido learns the truth by discovering the false».

 

Glucksmann pushes us with his example and his books - and especially with the last one - to have the audacity to say in public, whatever the cost, what citizens consider true and fair. Today silence is not the option. "The crime of indifference," he scuffles in our conscience, "is the first and necessary condition for the work of assassins." And he gives us two quotes: “A scream causes the avalanche”, by Solzhenitzin, and “Shout and let them scream!”, by Voltaire.